You're viewing an article in TMO's historic archive vault. Here, we've preserved the comments and how the site looked along with the article. Use this link to view the article on our current site:SCO Executives Dumping Stock

SCO Executives Dumping Stock

According to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune, SCO Group executives have dumped nearly 120,000 shares of stock since initially filing the lawsuit against IBM earlier this year. Robert Bench, the company's chief financial officer, began the trend four days after the lawsuit was filed, ending a streak of over a year of no insider stock sales. Since then, over $1.2 million worth of stock has been sold by executives. From the Salt Lake Tribune:

"Insider sales picking up is a negative sign," said Richard Campagna, who helps manage $750 million as director of research for Cleveland-based Shaker Investments. Shaker, which owns no shares of SCO, has stakes in computer-related companies including Flextronics International.

SCO spokesman Blake Stowell declined to comment on the share sales. The company will comment on the sales when it announces fiscal third-quarter results Thursday, he said. The company has a market value of about $120 million and had 13.7 million shares outstanding at the end of April.

Last week, IBM filed a counterclaim against SCO, denying the allegations and accusing SCO of infringing its patents. IBM's Linux customers include Unilever NV, the world's largest maker of food and soap, and VeriSign, which registers Web addresses. Bench has sold 17,151 shares in three separate sales since March 10, reducing his holdings to 228,043 shares, according to the Washington Service and regulatory filings. Vice President Michael Wilson sold his entire stake of 12,000 shares between July 14 and July 18, the Washington Service said.

The Mac Observer Spin:

There is an upside to this: It's now obvious that not even SCO executives think that this lawsuit has a chance of succeeding. Instead, they are bailing out, like rats from a sinking ship.

Speaking of sinking ships, this company apparently has the subtlety of a floundering cruise ship after a hit and run with an iceberg. As time goes on, this whole thing is sounding more like a "pump and dump" scam, where executives pump up the price of a stock, only to dump it all when the value of the company peaks, leaving investors high and dry. With any luck, The SCO Group will be paid a visit by the SEC soon.

On a related note, we think satire site BBSpot has nailed SCO's next step in its campaign to prevent unauthorized use of its claimed intellectual property...